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what's inside you?

Recently, I had attended Microsoft’s Inaugural Ignite tech conference @ Chicago, Illinois. One of the best parts of the experience was hearing first hand product changes from developers. Outside some of the branding of Outlook into Office 2016 for the Mac, Microsoft had mapped out their commitment to stability, enhancements, and regular updates. Those updates were getting specifically released every month or two from this point forward. Another noteworthy improvement was handling of attachments. Attachments were reintegrated into the client for saving directly into Office 365 or SharePoint with the same familiar icon. As an Exchange administrator, I had wondered, “How much email quota space an employee is going to save?” Probably quite a bit!

Of course, with the good had come the bad. Still off the table was lack of support for “recover deleted items” and “Import/Export of PSTs.” Though currently only Windows options, the product management team had verbally committed addressing these missing features in the near future (i.e. hopefully a year).

So, the big takeaway was developers reaching out to their customers. “How?” you might have asked. For my current environment, three areas had got my attention for connecting.

3. Where can you ask a quick question relating to product support outside of a bug, fix, or enhancement (i.e. What are supported versions of Exchange for Outlook 2016 for Mac?)

On Twitter with ‘Outlook for Mac’

Apparently, the product management team had curated each of the above areas regularly. That openness for contact was far more refreshing than hearing about any feature parity or cloud strategy. For years, Mac development had seemed like an afterthought. Now, Microsoft had made in words and deeds the thought of supporting Mac for Outlook just a bit more exciting!